Provides insights into the Malaysian English language policy, required standards, and testing in language use in Malaysian tertiary institutions. Gives information about backwash effects in particular about institutional programs related to the teaching of English as a Second Language. (Author/VWL)

Describes the development of a task-based test, Taaltoets Instroom Beroepsopleiding (TIBO), designed to measure whether nonnative adult speakers of Dutch posses the level of Dutch required to enter vocational training in the industrial sector. Focuses on three tensions that had to be considered throughout the process of test development.…

Describes the University of Texas at El Paso's use of a Spanish placement system that seeks to appropriately place both native and non-native speakers of Spanish in the correct track and level of Spanish courses. (CB)

A validation study of five checklists for assessing two-year-olds' word production revealed that the lists produced comparable mean production scores, reflected age differences, and preserved individual differences in total production and in production of linguistic categories such as nouns, verbs, open class items, and closed class items.…

Fifty-seven children, aged 23-28 months, were assessed using the Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development, mean length of utterance, and Minnesota Child Development Inventory (MCDI). The MCDI Expressive Language scale was found to be a valid predictor of expressive language. The MCDI Comprehension-Conceptual scale appeared to assess both…

In addition to the benefits of the oral proficiency movement, problems are seen, including flaws in the claim that the testing is proficiency based, the potential misuse of competency-based education, and the Oral Proficiency Interview's inability to test nonlinguistic barriers to communication. (Author/MSE)

Reports on the creation and trial of three new exit tests for (mostly Asian) students attending pre-course English language training. Test creation and trial involved analysis and selection of appropriate content, design of formats and test booklets, pre-testing, administration, and statistical analysis of the results. (Author/CB)

Sociolinguistics is recommended as a resource for second language teachers, to increase understanding in such areas as the nature of language, the goals and concerns of language teaching, perspective on curriculum and materials design, identification of appropriate goals, and evaluation of a learner's ability to use a second language. (43…

Presents the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages' guidelines for determining proficiency in writing, speaking, listening, and reading Arabic. Definitions for both generic and Arabic proficiency skills are provided for low-, mid-, or high-novice, -intermediate, and -advanced levels. (CB)

A validation study of the "semi-direct" Chinese Speaking Test (CST) directly compared college students' performance on the test with their performance on the "live" language proficiency interview. CST provided scoring results largely equivalent to those of the live interview, although examinees perceived CST to be more…

Describes attempts to formalize and characterize a theory of communicative competence, focusing on the advantages of a preference model (which identifies and grades learning variables in order of importance) and of models developed on the premise of parallel distributed processing (which suggest that such rule-based processing are in fact gross…

Describes the Concepts About Print test (CAP), a test designed to examine young children's knowledge of written language. Discusses variations of the CAP for other languages, including Spanish, Walpiri (an Australian aboriginal language), and Braille. (MM)

Reponses of poor, average, and good spellers at different age levels to a phonemic segmentation test containing nondigraph pseudowords and to an experimental spelling test containing exception, ambiguous, regular, and pseudowords suggested that the average and good spellers made fewer and more phonetically accurate errors than the poor spellers.…

This report discusses an experimental study in which Spanish dominant students were taught to use metacognitive reading strategies while reading in Spanish. Results of the study lend credibility to the notion that bilingual/bicultural children should be challenged to develop and employ more powerful levels of thought processing within the context…

Reviews recent theoretical, methodological, and analytical developments in language testing, focusing on more refined models of language ability, reliability and validity, performance testing, innovative test formats, new applications of Item Response Theory and Generalizability Theory to test performance. An annotated bibliography discusses seven…